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Charades: A guessing game that reinforces language
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Charades is a simple pantomime game where one player acts out the word or phrase without speaking. The other players guess the word or phrase.
In regular Charades, the possibilities are endless. But in order to make this game ideal of second language learners, you need to narrow the possibilities.
One group of teachers in the StarTalk Program taught a lesson on basketball. Their main vocabulary words were action verbs dealing with basketball. They narrowed the list down to six manageable terms: passing, blocking, dribbling, defense, slam duck, and stop.
After teaching the terms, they put the students into smaller groups. Each group had a bag with the six terms in Chinese. Students took turns pulling a term from the bag and acting it out for their team to guess. Since there were only six terms, it made the game fun and easy for students to play. If students forgot what the Chinese term meant, the characters were posted on the wall along with pictures for reference.
The game could be played in a large group, but smaller groups allow for more participation. The shy students are more willing to participate when there are fewer eyes focused on them. Smaller groups mean less wait time and more time engaged in the activity.
For more information:
Play Charades Online
For more about StarTalk games:
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